The Ware for November 2025 is shown below.
This one is hopefully a bit easier to guess compared to last month’s ware! Pictured is just one board of a two board set, but the second board is a bit too much of a dead give-away so it’s been omitted. Thanks to Sam for thinking on her feet and snatching this board so that it could be donated to the contest!
My guess would be a programmer for RFID cards/tokens. The ANT trace seems like an NFC antenna. The microswitch seems like it would physically detect if something like a card is placed against this, and as far as I know that is not common for readers, but that might be useful for detecting (or speed up detection for) uninitialized cards
Looks like a board from an RFID lock reader. Tamper switch, JTAG header, unpopulated relay (and NO/NC contacts) to directly open a door strike without using an external controller, big integrated antenna, LED that lights up to show card read status…
Looks like the PCB of a RFID-controlled door lock. Clues:
– The 13.560 MHz oscillator
– The ANT trace is likely an NFC antenna, as johslarsen noticed
– The N.O. | COM | N.C. is probably Normally Open, Common, Normally Closed output to power a door lock
– I don’t think that the microswitch is there to detect if an empty card is being pressed against the reader. I think it’s there as anti-tamper protection.
Is it a cheap crappy thing like this? ‘S2-EM IP66 Waterproof 125kHz 13.56MHz RFID Access Control Card Reader Card Access Control System Manager for 2000 Users’ on AliExpress? https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256808655590972.html
The board seems like it’s small enough to fit inside. This product is claiming to have anti-tamper features as well as support for 13.56Mhz RFID cards and keyfobs. The PCB is also blue, which doesn’t seem very common unless it’s either a hobbyist product or cheap crap, since normally you aren’t going to see the PCB while using the product.
I wanna say some kind of Pulse induction metal detector due to the weird diode clamping and the weird via at the diff segment of antenna.
but looking the SOIC relay layout and the 74HC04D, this really more look like door access control board for card access. The other missing board should hold the RFID reader ic.